Before we begin exploring the intricacies of backlink analysis and strategic planning, it’s essential to outline our overarching philosophy. This foundational understanding is designed to streamline our process for building effective backlink campaigns and ensures clarity in our approach as we delve deeper into the subject.
In the realm of SEO, we firmly believe that reverse engineering the strategies of our competitors should be prioritized. This critical step not only provides insights but also informs the action plan that will guide our optimization efforts.
Navigating through Google's complex algorithms can be challenging, as we often rely on limited clues such as patents and quality rating guidelines. While these resources can spark innovative SEO testing ideas, we must remain skeptical and not accept them at face value. The relevance of older patents in today’s ranking algorithms is uncertain, so it’s crucial to gather these insights, conduct tests, and validate our assumptions based on current data.
The SEO Mad Scientist operates as a detective, utilizing these clues as a basis for generating tests and experiments. While this abstract layer of understanding is valuable, it should only be a small piece of your overall SEO campaign strategy.
Next, we delve into the importance of competitive backlink analysis.
I am making a statement that I believe stands firm without contradiction: reverse engineering successful elements within a SERP is the optimal strategy to guide your SEO optimizations. This approach is unparalleled in its effectiveness.
To illustrate this concept further, let’s revisit a fundamental principle from seventh-grade algebra. Solving for ‘x,’ or any variable, involves assessing existing constants and applying a sequence of operations to uncover the variable's value. We can observe our competitors' tactics, the topics they cover, the links they acquire, and their keyword densities.
However, while gathering hundreds or thousands of data points can seem beneficial, most of this information may not provide significant insights. The true value in analyzing larger datasets lies in identifying shifts that correlate with rank changes. For many, a focused list of best practices derived from reverse engineering will suffice for effective link building.
The final component of this strategy involves not just achieving parity with competitors but also striving to exceed their performance. This approach may seem broad, especially in highly competitive niches where matching top-ranking sites could take years, but achieving baseline parity is just the first phase. A thorough, data-driven backlink analysis is essential for success.
Once you've established this baseline, your goal should be to surpass competitors by providing Google with the right signals to improve rankings, ultimately securing a prominent position in the SERPs. It’s unfortunate that these crucial signals often boil down to common sense in the realm of SEO.
While I dislike this notion due to its subjective nature, it is essential to recognize that experience and experimentation, along with a proven track record of SEO success, contribute to the confidence needed to identify where competitors falter and how to address those gaps in your planning process.
5 Actionable Steps to Mastering Your SERP Ecosystem
By exploring the intricate ecosystem of websites and links that contribute to a SERP, we can uncover a wealth of actionable insights that are invaluable for crafting a robust link plan. In this segment, we will systematically organize this information to identify valuable patterns and insights that will enhance our campaign.
Let’s take a moment to discuss the rationale behind organizing SERP data in this manner. Our method focuses on conducting a deep dive into the top competitors, providing a comprehensive narrative as we explore further.
Conduct a few searches on Google, and you’ll quickly discover an overwhelming number of results, sometimes exceeding 500 million. For instance:
Although we primarily focus on the top-ranking websites for our analysis, it’s worth noting that the links directed towards even the top 100 results can hold statistical significance, provided they meet the criteria of not being spammy or irrelevant.
I aim to gain extensive insights into the factors that influence Google's ranking decisions for top-ranking sites across various queries. With this information, we are better equipped to formulate effective strategies. Here are just a few goals we can achieve through this analysis.
1. Identify Key Links Influencing Your SERP Ecosystem
In this context, a key link is defined as a link that consistently appears in the backlink profiles of our competitors. The image below illustrates this, showing that certain links point to almost every site in the top 10. By analyzing a broader range of competitors, you can uncover even more intersections like the one demonstrated here. This strategy is backed by solid SEO theory, as supported by several reputable sources.
- https://patents.google.com/patent/US6799176B1/en?oq=US+6%2c799%2c176+B1 – This patent enhances the original PageRank concept by incorporating topics or context, acknowledging that different clusters (or patterns) of links have varying significance depending on the subject area. It serves as an early example of Google refining link analysis beyond a singular global PageRank score, suggesting that the algorithm detects patterns of links among topic-specific “seed” sites/pages and utilizes that to adjust rankings.
Key Quote Excerpts for Backlink Analysis
Implication: Google identifies distinct “topic” clusters (or groups of sites) and employs link analysis within those clusters to generate “topic-biased” scores.
While it doesn’t explicitly state “we favor link patterns,” it indicates that Google examines how and where links emerge, categorized by topic—a more nuanced approach than relying on a single universal link metric.
“…We establish a range of ‘topic vectors.’ Each vector ties to one or more authoritative sources… Documents linked from these authoritative sources (or within these topic vectors) earn an importance score reflecting that connection.”
Insightful Quote from Original Research Paper
“An expert document is focused on a specific topic and contains links to numerous non-affiliated pages on that topic… The Hilltop algorithm identifies and ranks documents that links from experts point to, enhancing documents that receive links from multiple experts…”
The Hilltop algorithm aims to identify “expert documents” for a topic—pages recognized as authorities in a specific field—and analyzes who they link to. These linking patterns can convey authority to other pages. While not explicitly stated as “Google recognizes a pattern of links and values it,” the underlying principle suggests that when a group of acknowledged experts frequently links to the same resource (pattern!), it constitutes a strong endorsement.
- Implication: If several experts within a niche link to a specific site or page, it is perceived as a strong (pattern-based) endorsement.
Although Hilltop is an older algorithm, it is believed that aspects of its design have been integrated into Google’s broader link analysis algorithms. The concept of “multiple experts linking similarly” effectively shows that Google scrutinizes backlink patterns.
I consistently seek positive, prominent signals that recur during competitive analysis and aim to leverage those opportunities whenever feasible.
2. Backlink Analysis: Identifying Unique Link Opportunities Using Degree Centrality
The process of identifying valuable links for achieving competitive parity begins with analyzing the top-ranking websites. Manually sifting through dozens of backlink reports from Ahrefs can be an arduous task. Moreover, delegating this work to a virtual assistant or team member can lead to a backlog of ongoing tasks.
Ahrefs allows users to input up to 10 competitors into their link intersect tool, which I believe is the best tool available for link intelligence. This tool enables users to streamline their analysis if they are comfortable with its depth.
As stated earlier, our focus is on extending our reach beyond the standard list of links that other SEOs are targeting to attain parity with the top-ranking websites. This approach allows us to create a strategic advantage during the early planning stages as we work to influence the SERPs.
Thus, we implement several filters within our SERP Ecosystem to identify “opportunities,” defined as links that our competitors possess but we do not.
This process allows us to quickly identify orphaned nodes within the network graph. By sorting the table by Domain Rating (DR)—while I’m not overly fond of third-party metrics, they can be useful for quickly identifying valuable links—we can discover powerful links to add to our outreach workbook.
3. Organize and Control Your Data Pipelines Efficiently
This strategy enables the easy addition of new competitors and their integration into our network graphs. Once your SERP ecosystem is set up, expanding it becomes a seamless process. You can also eliminate unwanted spam links, blend data from various related queries, and manage a more comprehensive database of backlinks.
Effectively organizing and filtering your data is the first step toward generating scalable outputs. This level of detail can uncover countless new opportunities that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Transforming data and creating internal automations while introducing additional layers of analysis can foster the development of innovative concepts and strategies. Personalize this process, and you will discover numerous use cases for such a setup, far beyond what can be covered in this article.
4. Discover Mini Authority Websites Using Eigenvector Centrality
In the realm of graph theory, eigenvector centrality suggests that nodes (websites) gain significance as they connect to other important nodes. The more essential the neighboring nodes, the higher the perceived value of the node itself.
This may not be beginner-friendly, but once the data is organized within your system, scripting to uncover these valuable links becomes a straightforward task, and even AI can assist you in this process.
5. Backlink Analysis: Leveraging Disproportionate Competitor Link Distributions
While the concept may not be new, examining 50-100 websites in the SERP and pinpointing the pages that garner the most links is an effective method for extracting valuable insights.
We can focus exclusively on “top linked pages” on a site, but this approach often yields limited beneficial information, particularly for well-optimized websites. Typically, you will observe a few links directed toward the homepage and the primary service or location pages.
The ideal approach is to target pages with a disproportionate number of links. To achieve this programmatically, you’ll need to filter these opportunities through applied mathematics, with the specific methodology left to your discretion. This task can be challenging, as the threshold for outlier backlinks can vary significantly based on the overall link volume—for example, a 20% concentration of links on a site with only 100 links versus one with 10 million links represents a drastically different scenario.
For instance, if a single page attracts 2 million links while hundreds or thousands of other pages collectively gather the remaining 8 million, it signals that we should reverse-engineer that particular page. Was it a viral sensation? Does it provide a valuable tool or resource? There must be a compelling reason behind the influx of links.
Backlink Analysis: Unflagged Scores
With this valuable data, you can begin to investigate why certain competitors are acquiring unusual amounts of links to specific pages on their site. Use this understanding to inspire the creation of content, resources, and tools that users are likely to link to.
The utility of data is vast. This justifies investing time in developing a process to analyze larger sets of link data. The opportunities available for you to capitalize on are virtually limitless.
Backlink Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting a Link Plan
Your first step in this process involves sourcing backlink data. We highly recommend Ahrefs due to its consistently superior data quality compared to competitors. However, if possible, blending data from multiple tools can enhance your analysis.
Our link gap tool serves as an excellent solution. Just input your site, and you’ll receive all the essential information:
- Visualizations of link metrics
- URL-level distribution analysis (both live and total)
- Domain-level distribution analysis (both live and total)
- AI analysis for deeper insights
Map out the exact links you’re missing—this focus will help close the gap and fortify your backlink profile with minimal guesswork. Our link gap report provides more than just graphical data; it also includes an AI analysis, offering an overview, key findings, competitive analysis, and link recommendations.
It’s common to discover unique links on one platform that aren’t available on others; however, consider your budget and your ability to process the data into a unified format.
Next, you will require a data visualization tool. There’s no shortage of options available to help you achieve our objective. Here are a few resources to assist you in selecting one:
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